


Blame the Rum

by cruisedirector, Zwarte Parel (Celandine)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Birth Control, Boats and Ships, Canon Het Relationship, Cunnilingus, Desire, Dirty Talk, Dress Up, Drunk Sex, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Food, Gender Issues, Hand Jobs, Het, Implied Slash, Infidelity, Intercrural Sex, Multiple Partners, Off-screen Relationship(s), Open Relationships, Past Relationship(s), Pirates, Polyamory, Secrets, Sex Talk, Teaching, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-02
Updated: 2006-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:55:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Zwarte%20Parel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth may not understand how Jack's compass works, but she could hardly be described as naive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame the Rum

**Author's Note:**

> The Mouse owns Will, Elizabeth and the Black Pearl; no one owns Captain Jack Sparrow. Warnings: Lasciviousness. Carnality. Polyamory. Rum. Potential anachronisms. Explicit het. Intimations of slash.

It was in equal parts infuriating and flattering that he did not recognize her in boy's clothing, even when she said that she was looking for her true love. Was Captain Jack Sparrow so used to declarations of desire from both men and women that he took them for granted? And it was likewise outrageous that he promptly began what he must have intended as flattery, suggesting that she would look better in a dress or nothing... and that he happened to have no dress in his cabin.

Elizabeth dismissed _that_ proposal with the contempt it deserved. She was here for the sole purpose of saving Will and herself from the gallows, she assured herself. Threatening Cutler Beckett and forcing him to give her the letter of marque with which to bribe Jack, brawling in a Tortuga drinking establishment and near-braining poor James with a bottle of rum, working aboard the _Black Pearl_ and enduring Jack's lewd suggestions -- all those were incidental. The fact that she felt no real disgust at any of it was merely proof positive that she was doing what she must and that her conscience was clear.

She dismissed, at first, Jack's invitation to dinner as well, certain that the offer was intended as a prologue to another feeble attempt at seduction. But several weeks of dining on honest sailor's rations, followed by the revolting fare that passed for food in Tortuga, had left her so thin that it was no wonder people easily mistook her for a boy. Though she remained disinclined to accept his invitation, Jack promised earnestly that no rum -- or, at least, very little rum -- would be served at the meal. In the end, hunger won out over principle.

Besides, dinner seemed a perfect opportunity to question Jack about precisely what had happened to Will and why Beckett wanted that compass so badly. Once Jack had helped himself to more than his share of the rum, which suited Elizabeth since she had no intention of partaking herself, she picked up one of the green apples of which Jack seemed lately fond and said, "I can't help but wonder why an East India Company official would be so interested in you. It seems he already knew of the curse on the Aztec gold from the Isla de Muerta. To what other treasure could your compass point him?"

Jack refilled her glass before answering; she might have objected except that it was wine instead of rum, and she was accustomed to the former. He would not get her drunk that way.

"Don't know, love," he said easily, leaning back and propping his boots on the table. Elizabeth rather envied him that freedom, but feared that if she imitated him, her chair would fall over. "If it's not the Aztec gold he wants, the compass wouldn't lead him there, savvy? The island being sunk in any case, it would do him little good if it did. But where it _would_ lead him -- that I couldn't say."

"You told me on deck that it would point to the thing I wanted most in the world, but you seemed quite determined to convince me that the thing I most wanted was to find the chest of Davy Jones. I had wondered whether it only worked for a person once, and that was why it would not point _you_ to the chest."

"It doesn't work like that." Jack's voice was surprisingly patient. "It'll point different ways for different people at different times, and for some it may never work at all."

"That makes no sense." Elizabeth shook her head in frustration. "If a compass works at all, it ought to point in the same direction all the time."

"For a woman who traveled to the Isla de Muerta and witnessed the Aztec curse with your own eyes, your ideas about how things ought to work are sadly limited." Jack grinned at her, showing all his filthy teeth. "That was no ordinary gold in the chest, those were no ordinary pirates on the Black Pearl... and mine is no ordinary compass."

"Then how does it work? The legend of the Isla de Muerta was that it could only be found by one who already knew where it was, yet you discovered it with that compass. Is Beckett looking for another treasure? He said his goals were not so provincial."

"And they are not." Jack had stopped smiling, and took another swallow -- if the rum loosened his tongue, she would not object to the vile liquor this once. "The East India Company will not rest until it controls all these waters. _That_ is what your Lord Beckett wants, and what your father has likely been charged with helping men like him to achieve."

"My father would not acquiesce to such a request!" Elizabeth protested. "His loyalty and service are to the Crown, not to the Company; their business is in the Indian Ocean and not the Caribbean in any case."

"Not provincial, remember? Beckett and his sort have an eye on monopolizing _all_ British trade. They hide their goal behind the screen of stopping piracy." His voice was bitter. "Not just men like me, but even merchantmen who think the taxes and fees of the official ports unreasonably high. There'll be neither trade nor freedom for any of us if he succeeds."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Jack's as she took a sip from her glass. She had heard enough at her father's table to recognize what he said as the truth. "But how would your compass help him to do that? That is what I cannot fathom."

"Because, as you have already surmised, my compass would not suggest a single direction for such a lofty goal." Jack swung his arm wide, as if to indicate the scope of the seas, and knocked over a canister of paprika. Elizabeth hid her smile; this was clear evidence that Jack was becoming drunk, and a drunken Jack would continue to speak freely.

Bending to retrieve the container, she discovered on its base the mark of the East India Company and frowned. The spice trade was indeed affecting all Caribbean shipping, with a great deal of gold passing between the New World and London but very little of it remaining with the English who lived in the Americas. "You're saying that your compass will show Beckett what he wants to see?" she asked Jack. "Is that how you found the Isla de Muerta? The compass will point to whatever object you seek?"

"Alas, not everything that a man desires may be a simple object. Nor a woman, I'll wager." Again Jack offered her a toothy grin, though his eyes were serious. "If one wished only to find gold, or silk, or the nearest rum, the compass would indicate a course with no wavering about." Jack spun his hands in the air as the ship rolled on a wave, tilting him nearly out of his chair. Indeed, he was drunk. "But if one wished to find safe harbor, or freedom... there's no one direction would always be true."

Safe harbor and freedom might be too vague for a compass, but Elizabeth presumed that Beckett was after something more tangible and that Jack was as well. "So a person could use it to find anything he liked."

"Not quite, love." Jack wagged a finger at her. "The compass points to nothing more or less than one's deepest desire at that moment. Some desires being more momentary than others, you understand." He poured himself another glass of rum, holding the bottle out to her inquiringly. When she shook her head, he refilled her glass with wine instead before she could protest. Well, she need not drink it.

One's deepest desire? She _could_ use the compass to find Will, then, wherever he might be, regardless of Jack's attempts to steer her toward this chest he wanted. But only if Jack permitted her to use the compass; to her knowledge, the only time it had been off his person was when he had been locked up in the prison in Port Royal.

"How does the compass know one's desires? Merely from thinking of them? Or does the holder not even need to think?" If she were to borrow the compass -- with, or if necessary, without Jack's knowledge -- she wanted to be sure how to use it.

"Ah, now. There's the true question."

Elizabeth waited, but Jack did not continue. "You don't _know_ how it works!" she accused.

"On the contrary, I know precisely how it works. What I do not know is _why_ it works, but to know that, I would have to know why people want what they want, and if I knew that, I would not need a compass to lead me to riches." Elizabeth gave him a skeptical glance over the rim of her glass. "Take yourself, for example. You're a fine, well-bred woman who wants to be a pirate."

"I most certainly do not!" Really. The effrontery of the man was boundless.

Jack raised his glass to her with an appreciative smile that did not in any way lessen her outrage. "You lived in that grand house in Port Royal where your father is governor. You had dresses and jewelry that any woman in the Caribbean would envy. You were engaged to marry a commodore whose fortunes were rising. And you chose to throw in your lot with the son of a notorious pirate who'd turned pirate himself..."

"Only to rescue me!" she protested.

"Is that what sweet William told you? Did it never seem unusual to you, love, how quickly he took to the sea? You and he both know more about what a ship can do than most of those poor souls on deck, and you and he would both toss aside your fancy clothes and your proper roles to throw in your lot with a buccaneer. You knew what William was when you chose him. Be it in the name of love or freedom, you're a pirate." He set down his drink emphatically and ran his tongue over his lips in a gesture that could only be described as provocative.

"I am not a pirate!" She felt herself flush, and took a drink of her wine, hoping to cool down.

"You knew the Code well enough to demand to parley with Barbossa. You managed to deal with the two men he'd left here on the _Pearl_ well enough to free my crew." Jack ticked the points off on his fingers. "You staged a faint at a most opportune time -- and that was well done, love, I must compliment your performance -- to enable young Will to assist myself out of the hangman's noose. You further placed yourself in such a spot as to enable me to escape the Crown's justice altogether. And you _persuaded_ Lord Cutler Beckett to part with a letter of marque, and _that_ is the most piratical of all; sheer unabashed theft of property, I'd call it. The lady doth protest too much."

Elizabeth fumed. She could hardly deny the truth of what Jack said, but... "I don't go 'round threatening to fire on other men's ships and steal all they own!"

"Oh, is _that_ what makes a man a pirate? Or a woman?" Jack began to pick his teeth with a chicken bone and Elizabeth tried not to curl her lip in disgust. "Well, if that be the rule, then I am no more pirate than you are. That is, only when necessary to defend myself or my livelihood from men like Beckett."

This was surely a lie, but Elizabeth did not bother to quarrel with Jack's terms. Instead she said, "With this letter of marque, you will be able to chase and capture enemy vessels and plunder their treasure. No English ship in the Caribbean will trouble you and you will no longer live under threat of the hangman's noose."

"Ah, but I'll have the noose around my neck already." Jack grabbed at his throat and made a choking gesture for emphasis, drawing Elizabeth's eyes to his long and rather elegant neck. "I'd be under the King's rule... the King's rules. I have no use for your fancy scraps of paper."

If that were true, then she had nothing with which to bribe Jack to take her to Will once he had finished using her for his own purpose. It was clear enough that Jack had not brought her on board out of any charity -- he believed that he could use her to find the chest he had ordered her to think about. His willingness to let her use the compass now made sense.

What did not make sense, however, was why Jack couldn't make the compass lead _him_ to the chest. Though she was certain he would prevaricate if it suited him, Elizabeth asked directly nonetheless.

"'Tis a reasonable question, to which there must be a reasonable answer, that being that when one's desires are unreasoning, one may find oneself torn between reason and desire." Gold teeth flashed as Jack grinned at her.

With an effort, Elizabeth picked through his tortuous language and concluded, "You mean that you have no single deepest desire, and therefore the compass will not work for you." She wondered what in the seven seas else it was Jack might want besides the chest of which he had spoken. Perhaps the freedom he treasured so... freedom and safety, as he had said, two such opposing forces that not even a magical compass might be able to find both at once. But what was he running from, if not Beckett and the noose?

"More than once, I've been given my deepest desire, only to have it snatched from me." Jack tossed back the contents of his glass and refilled it. Elizabeth was startled to find herself feeling almost sorry for him. "Rather as you, as I understand it, were deprived of your wedding night." Now that Jack was grinning at her with that knowing look, Elizabeth's pity disappeared. "Your frustration could lead to hysteria."

"I am not hysterical!" she snapped at him.

"Perhaps not. Not _yet_. But consider your behavior, pretending to be a man, sneaking aboard a ship. Did you fool them all, or did you barter your precious chastity for passage, trading favors for..."

"How dare you!" Elizabeth leapt to her feet, realizing only after she had done so that Jack would take this as proof that she was becoming hysterical. He pushed her glass at her, but she shoved it to the side.

"The only cure I've heard to treat the wandering womb is to relieve yourself of the burden of your virginity. Perhaps I could help you with that."

"You! You are a vile man, and I am no virgin to require your help!" The words had slipped out of her mouth before she could censor them.

Jack lifted his eyebrows. "No? I declare myself astonished, Miss Swann. I assume it was dear William who assisted you in misplacing that which brought you no joy?" She could not decide whether to storm out of the cabin or slap his face for his presumption, and before she could do either, Jack continued, "I must offer him my compliments on his fine taste when next we meet." Now the glint in his eye was even sharper.

Elizabeth stepped around the table, drawing back her hand. Quick as a flash he was standing next to her, pinioning her wrist and pressed disconcertingly close, so that she could smell the rum on his breath and an odd spicy scent that she could not quite place. "No, you don't, love. Strike me and it's insubordination, and I'd have to order a dozen lashes."

"You wouldn't dare." She glared at him, yanking her hand out of his grasp.

"It isn't a question of what I want, it's a question of maintaining discipline." Jack released her wrist, but he was still touching her with his body from her bosom to her thigh. "Do you have any idea how difficult that is for a pirate? Take young William, for instance. I'd have guessed that he would be a traditional suitor, wishing to wait for formal nuptials before enjoying the wedding gifts, if you take my meaning. But I suppose I might have corrupted him a bit."

"What you insist on deeming Will's piratical behavior has only ever been in the service of causes greater than himself," Elizabeth hissed into Jack's satisfied face, and then her stomach flipped over. "Or... did you mean... did you and he... no. He wouldn't have. You didn't."

But even as she spoke her denials, Elizabeth suspected the truth. Like Jack, she had expected Will to insist that they should be legally wed before they were intimate, and had planned an elaborate seduction to convince him to set aside such scruples. But Will had been entirely amenable, even grateful and relieved, as if he had had something to prove to himself.

He _had_ spent several days alone on the _Interceptor_ with Jack.

Elizabeth could not decide whether Jack had intended to unnerve her or to provoke her. She found herself drinking in great gulps when Jack handed her a glass, then choked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He had given her his glass of rum instead of her own wine... deliberately, she suspected.

"And if we did?" Elizabeth stared, dizzied, into kohl-rimmed eyes that held her own with an intense gaze. "Would you think the less of him? Or of me?"

"I..." She was going to faint, she was sure of it. Remembering the only time she had ever done so in her life -- when she had fallen from the cliff, and woken to find herself in only her shift, with Jack leaning over her, touching her -- she felt face heat and her breath come short. Abruptly Jack's arm was around her waist, guiding her to sit back down in her chair. How could she answer him? "I would not."

"Would you not, now?" he said softly, taking the glass from her unresisting fingers and downing what was left, reaching for the bottle and refilling it without ever taking his eyes from her.

"I have read tales of pirates, which say that it is not an uncommon practice among men long at sea without any women," she whispered. It was unlikely that that had been Will's excuse, since he had taken to the sea with the specific goal of rescuing her, but it was all too easy to imagine how Jack had insinuated himself between her fiancé and his moral rectitude, just as Jack was now doing to Elizabeth herself. Not that he was succeeding, of course.

But Elizabeth sometimes thought that in his sense of virtue, Will could be rather naive. He had truly expected that they would escape blame for Jack's escape, when instead it had ruined Norrington and sentenced Will and herself to the gallows. No wonder Will was such a passionate lover, when in other circumstances he was as upright and proper as her father, despite her father's barely checked disapproval of Will's common origins. Elizabeth had feared Will might object to some of her desires as unconventional, even perverse, but if he had been familiar with Jack, there was probably very little she could have proposed that would have shocked him entirely.

"Which of you played the man's part?" she found herself asking before she could still her tongue to check the question. The rum, that had to be it; it could not be that she was imagining what Will -- her own Will -- and Jack would have looked like together. What they might have done. It could not be that the thought of it made her breath catch and her thighs grow damp.

Jack stared at her for a moment, then laughed, a hearty laugh that set the bangles in his hair to clattering and clinking against one another. Elizabeth found herself quite relieved at his lack of anger, so much so that when he pushed his half-emptied glass into her hand, she lifted it to her lips and swallowed without thinking twice. "Which do you think?" He cocked his head.

Heat flooded through her at the look in his eyes, dark and dangerous and oddly compelling, demanding a response. She scarcely knew what she thought, but opened her mouth to answer nonetheless. "I think... you did." Her voice sounded unlike itself, throaty and almost slurred.

"And you'd have been right, love, at least one time." Elizabeth gasped softly. Jack was suggesting that they had done it more than once! "But you can't think that sweet William would have let me use him like a cabin boy. I had to use my mouth on him like a Tortuga whore just to convince him to try it..."

She moaned; she couldn't help herself. Jack's hand settled on her waist as if he expected her to swoon, except that his thumb was brushing the underside of her breast, and he leaned close to whisper in her ear, his rum-sweetened breath warming the side of her face. "I don't know what sort of tales a fine lady like yourself might have been reading, but I expect they've got most of the details wrong. Among pirates, we don't expect either man or woman to play only one part. I'd thought you understood that, coming onto my ship in these boy's clothes." The hand moved up to brush her nipple.

"Stop that," she ordered breathlessly, but she was already pushing against him, moving her thighs apart to allow one of his to intrude.

"Don't tell me you wouldn't like it, love. You can be the man, as you say, if that's what you want. Or you can be the boy whose clothes you're wearing and I'll show you how it is for ship's boys. You can even be the captain here in my cabin. You can take any part you wish."

Oh, sweet heaven, was he suggesting...? She shook her head, regretting it almost instantly as the room seemed to sway more than could be accounted for by the rocking of the sea.

"No?" Jack's voice was a murmur hot against her throat as she put her arms around him to steady herself. "Then I'll treat you like a lady for now, shall I? Pirate though you be."

His lips found hers, and she opened them to the insistent flicker of his tongue. If Will had done this with Jack, he could hardly quarrel with her for doing the same. The hand that moved across her bosom, slipping under the coarse linen of her shirt, grazing the taut flesh of her nipple, drew a gasp from her throat.

Jack chuckled. "Though if you wish to be a lady, you had best remove these clothes," he pulled his mouth away far enough to say.

Elizabeth's fingers had already moved to open her shirt before she paused. "But I can't," she whispered, hearing the tremor of regret in her own voice. One of her maids had taught her how to follow the moon from the start of her courses, so she knew how to calculate the days when a man's seed might take root in her. But since she had been at sea, she had neglected the count; she could not be certain that she would not find herself with child.

As if he knew what was troubling her, Jack nodded as he reached for the ties on the ill-fitting breeches she wore. "If you trusted me, I would assure you of my ability to aim before I fire, as it were," he murmured as his fingers stroked her belly just above the spot where, she found to her horror and excitement, she wished to feel them. "But if you do not wish to trust me so far, perhaps you will allow me to demonstrate that I do not overstate my skill at using my tongue for more than pretty words."

Jack wanted to put his tongue... _there_? Will had never suggested it and she would not have dared to think of it. The rum had surely driven all thought of restraint from her thoughts. "Oh, yes," she moaned, "yes, yes..." The breeches slid from her hips, and Jack lifted her onto the table, pushing aside the plates, the silver and even the rum as he encouraged her to lie back and spread her thighs.

Warm breath nonetheless gave her gooseflesh as Jack's tongue traced a line down from her navel, and the knots and bangles of his beard tickled, but when he lapped over her slit Elizabeth forgot all of that. She bit into her knuckles and whimpered when Jack teased open her folds, suckling on the nub of flesh that brought her such pleasure when she touched herself -- but still more now. His arms held her thighs firmly apart; she could only give herself up to the sensations that he wrung from her.

"Oh, God!" With such rationality as she still retained she was glad that the cry could not have been loud, not with her fingers muffling her voice, as she shook with pleasure. Jack did not stop, however, and she thought she heard him chuckle. His tongue merely flickered faster, coaxing her up the heights once again. It had not been like this with Will... the thought drifted through her mind, and she recoiled from the disloyalty of it, but she could no more have told Jack to stop now than she could have stayed tamely in prison in Port Royal.

"Where did you learn to do that?" she asked when she could speak again, shaky and weak though her voice was.

"From a lady of my acquaintance in a part of Port Royal I'd wager you have never visited," grinned Jack, straightening and pulling her to a sitting position before he lifted her down from the table and pulled her into his lap in one of the chairs. She could feel him fumbling with his breeches between them.

_He took instruction from a whore_, thought Elizabeth, _and now he is teaching me._ The thought should have sickened her rather than excited her. Jack pulled out his prick and put her hand on it, moving her fingers over his flesh. He smelled of sweat and rum and something she could not identify, but she had smelled it on Will, too, on the bed in his home behind the smithy.

"Ah... don't be delicate about it, love," groaned Jack.

She tightened her grip, feeling the heat of him, the way that the loose skin slid under her fingers. Experimentally she brushed her thumb across the head and felt moisture welling from the slit. Jack closed his fingers more firmly over hers and showed her how he wanted her to move, straight and fast along the shaft as the loose skin moved over the head and back, exposing the damp tip. Once she had his rhythm, he let go.

It felt -- rough, almost, though he seemed to like that. With her sitting on his legs he could not thrust against her, but his hips shifted slightly at each stroke. Elizabeth watched Jack's face. Will had closed his eyes when they were together, but Jack's stayed open, glittering back at her.

"It won't break off, keep on, that's right," he muttered when she paused to adjust herself to a more comfortable angle and then took up the movements again at a slightly faster pace. He hissed between his teeth, his hand on her thigh tweaking her wet curls, one finger slipping down to caress her again.

"Wait." Breathlessly she spoke as she shifted her weight, pushing him down with one hand on his shoulder and leaning forward until she was pressing the slick heat between her legs against his prick, not taking it inside her but sliding up and down against the shaft so that it pressed firmly against her most sensitive spots. Jack made a soft grunting noise, bucking up beneath her like a horse, then shifted his arms around her thighs to pull them higher on his hips.

Now he could thrust beneath her, though the pace was still hers, and she held on to his shoulders and rode him until his head went back, his teeth closed on his cry and she felt her belly and thighs suddenly wet with his seed. The feeling of fullness in her loins was nearly painful. She pushed her hand between them, rubbing her finger over the swollen bump in the soft wet folds, and once more went rigid with pleasure.

When she could breathe again, she found Jack looking at her with an expression she had once thought he reserved only for the _Black Pearl_. "You do that very well, love," he murmured, putting a hand in her hair and pulling her down for a kiss. Elizabeth felt the beginnings of shame heat her cheeks; she returned the kiss to avoid having to look at Jack. He had probably done this with countless women -- whores in Tortuga and Port Royal -- and she, who had hoped to become a proper married woman, had just shamelessly given herself up to him only for pleasure, without even the excuse of desperation for gold or a place to sleep.

Perhaps Jack somehow knew what she was thinking, for he held the kiss long enough to make her squirm and moan once more, his thumbs stroking along her ribcage and the rounded edges of her breasts. When he turned her mouth loose at last he said, "No regrets, now."

The assured tone in which he spoke had her nodding before she could think. "But, Jack..."

"None." He drew a calloused finger along the line of her throat, and she shivered even in the heat of the cabin. "You came to me because you and your bonny lad faced the gallows on my account. He and I tasted pleasure together before, same as the two of us have tonight; only fair, that." It was, Elizabeth supposed. Will had certainly never mentioned any such activities to her, but she didn't doubt that Jack told the truth of it. "Furthermore," Jack's voice was a coaxing rumble, "you might even consider it my wedding gift to you both, to bring a bit of -- savor -- to the marriage bed."

"Your arrogance is exceeded only by your... oh!" She had lost track of Jack's other hand, which had slid flat-palmed down her side, across her thigh and around her bottom where she had thought he meant to help support her in his lap. Now one finger was wriggling into the furrow, touching the dirtiest crevice of her body -- slick now from her position atop him and their activities -- and it felt shockingly agreeable to be stroked there.

"You don't have to give up groaning because you don't want to risk a swollen belly, you know," Jack was whispering. "There's more than one way to top the mast."

It had not fully occurred to Elizabeth until that moment that if it was possible for a man to fit a prick inside that filthy place, it should be possible for a woman as well. She had assumed that women abstained during their courses and their breeding times, but had long suspected that her maids knew things that the proper ladies of Port Royal never discussed among themselves.

The idea disgusted her, yet she could not deny the sparks of excitement from what Jack's fingertip was doing. "Will let you do this to him?" she demanded.

"Standing and holding a beam," Jack agreed. She shuddered with arousal at the image the words conjured. "And he to me. Young William might be too much of a gentleman to ask, but there is a place here -- " Jack wriggled the finger " -- brings as much pleasure as rum."

"Why, Captain Jack Sparrow," she gasped. "Perhaps you need less rum and more..." Barbossa's phrase came to her. "...pleasurable company."

"Are you offering me such company?" Jack's finger slid a bit further inside, and his thumb began to explore her slit once more. "Perhaps both yours and Will's as well?"

Elizabeth's eyes flew open, but though Jack had a sly grin on his face, she thought he was actually serious. "Mine... _and_ Will's? You can't mean..."

"Oh, I do mean." She moaned as he flicked his thumb against her. "When there's an opportune moment. I do not think sweet William will say no, if you are willing to oblige."

His prick was swelling against her again, doubtless stimulated by that most indecent suggestion. Who was she to say what was decent, though, who had just given herself over to a pirate... was making no attempt to stop him from doing what she ought to be horrified at? Elizabeth shuddered, her thighs clenching. _Please, don't let him stop._ "If Will does not object, nor will I."

"Now get up." She started, stared, wondering what on Earth she had said to offend him, whether he had only been testing to see how like a common whore she might behave. She had begun to shake, as Jack withdrew his fingers from her, before he caught sight of her face. "I've lost all feeling in my leg, love, and you might prefer a change of scenery." His grin was hungry as he helped her to her feet and turned her to face the table, where he placed her hands flat on the surface and moved in close behind, letting his breeches fall about his feet.

"The fact of the matter is, I would be very happy to see dear William standing where I am now, with his fine form between me and you. Or to find myself speared on young Will's spit while I stand here with you. Or to help you keep your balance while you steer his tiller. But since we are alone..." Jack's fingers had come around Elizabeth's body, parted the curls between her legs and two of them slid easily into the wet heat there while his thumb began rubbing up and down above the entrance, and his prick was pushed firmly in the furrow behind without trying to press inside her.

"Can you really aim," she sputtered, "can you really stop, before...?"

"I can indeed, as many before you could attest." Somehow the thought of Jack with -- how many? -- other women only heated Elizabeth more. "Do you trust me to fire no shot that would reach an unwilling target?"

His fingers were not enough. She needed him inside her, needed to have his prick invading her as the thought of him had invaded her mind time and again. _Pirate._ "I trust you, Jack." Foolish though that might be.

"Well, then," he murmured. "We shall save breaching the outer hull for another time, eh?" He eased her a bit further from the table, and then she felt his fingers slipping out, to be replaced by his prick. He slid home slowly, and Elizabeth sighed in relief as she was filled. "Oh, you did want that, you cannot hide it, can you?"

"No," she confessed as he began to move. "Oh... oh!" Jack was still touching her as well, sure as when he turned the tiller or secured a line.

With her hands braced on the table, she could push herself back into his thrusts, setting the pace as she liked it. Jack's free hand came around to cup one of her breasts and his lips pushed her hair aside to give him access to her throat, which he kissed and sucked, reminding her of how he had used his mouth on her below and how much she had enjoyed it.

"Harder," she moaned, shoving herself back at him. In addition to driving himself in and out with less restraint, his thumb and forefinger tugged at her breast until the center had knotted itself into a firm peak.

It was a strange sensation, yet having Jack touching her in so many places was overwhelming. She could swoon from this, she thought, far more easily than the heat or even a corset. Jack's promise to let her play Captain or cabin boy returned to her, and she groaned and pushed harder against him. How very delightful it would be to command him to pleasure her on his knees... Her climax caught her by surprise; she cried out Jack's name as the tremors overtook her, then blushed to realize what she had done.

"Easy, love," he panted in her ear, and she felt him slipping out of her. "You want to be careful of that." His cock pressed against her nether entrance for a moment, and Elizabeth tensed, not sure she was ready to play a boy's part so completely. "No, stand so." Jack shifted, then moved her legs to be tight together. "Another way the lads make shift for themselves," he said, beginning to thrust between her thighs.

Each push slid past the tight nub between her folds, but not quite firmly enough to bring her to that peak of pleasure again. Elizabeth bent over a bit and reached down; Jack groaned and moved faster when her fingers touched the head of his prick.

"Sure you've not done this before?" he asked in a rough voice.

"No, of course not!" She could feel the outer skin of Jack's prick sliding up and down, both with her fingers and the sensitive flesh enveloping it, and brushed her thumb across the exposed head as he pressed forward. She did not think that she would reach that blinding summit again so soon, but she was still so slick and stimulated that it was pleasurable just to feel him move against her.

Jack's arm came around her, squeezing her waist, then his fingers slid along her arm to move between hers. "Keep your hand just here, and I'll give you my treasure, love," he crooned, wrapping her palm so that it would cup the head of his prick each time he thrust forward. She pressed two fingers under the bulge at the top, rubbing the spot where the loose skin attached, and felt Jack tremble against her. "Aye, there... almost there..."

He groaned against her neck, and she felt her hand grow drenched with the hot jets pumping out of him as he shook behind her. Jack's seed smelled cleaner than he did, with nothing of sweat yet something that reminded her of the sea. While he rested against her, breathing with the liquid rasps of a man who has nearly drowned, she lifted that hand to her face and sniffed at it. Yes, like the sea, but also something like bread rising, and beneath it the oily-sweet smell of her own arousal.

She touched the edge of her tongue to the viscous fluid, and quickly withdrew; it was less offensive than she might have imagined, but musky-bitter, a melon gone rotten before it had ripened. Jack caught her hand before she could lower it, turning her so that he could lick it clean -- the flavor seemed to please him. The touch of his mouth on her skin still sent shivers through her, or perhaps that came from the way his eyes did not leave her as he worked.

When he relinquished her and stepped away to pull up his breeches and lace them, quite unselfconsciously, Elizabeth reached for her own clothes and began to fasten the shirt with trembling hands. What had she done here?

"Jack." She forced herself to speak.

"Aye?" He was settling the coarse fabric around his hips. Would she ever be able to look at him again without imagining his prick and what it had felt like inside her?

"No one must know of this." Of that she was sure, and urgent. She might -- would! -- tell Will herself. Sometime. If she did not, no doubt Jack himself would, and think it a fine joke. But no one else.

"Who'd believe me if I told them, love?" Jack smiled toothily, and Elizabeth blushed -- she suspected that James Norrington would believe him all too readily, and Gibbs, and Beckett, and perhaps even her father. Yes, she would tell Will, though he had not had the courtesy to tell her about his own encounters with Captain Jack Sparrow. He deserved to know, and she did not mean that entirely kindly. She thought to blame the rum, but she knew she had not drunk enough for that, despite Jack's best efforts. Nor had he.

"Here's the thing of it," Jack interrupted her musings. "You still need my compass to find young William. And I still need you to steer my compass. So we still need each other." Elizabeth nodded. "And if that need extend to this need," he made a sweeping gesture, "why then, needs must, eh? A proper pirate does not share his treasure with those who have no need of it. And if I have the compass and need you, and you have yourself and need my compass, then it's better to have and not need, than need and not have. If you catch my meaning."

A laugh bubbled up from her lips. "Very well. A clandestine arrangement of mutual convenience it shall be." She picked up the compass from the table and tucked it into her own pocket. "If I'm to use it, I should have it."

"Pirate," Jack whispered as Elizabeth turned to leave.

"I have studied them," she said with an elaborate shrug. "If I must consort with the wrong sort of people to achieve the right sort of ends, I must understand their strategies."

"That's very clever, love, but I _am_ your sort of people." Captain Jack Sparrow sat back down in the chair where he had first made assault on her virtue and put his feet up on the spot on his table where he had spread her out to feast upon. And though her cheeks burned as she slipped from his cabin, Elizabeth could not deny that it was true.


End file.
